[Illustration:  Farmer. “YOU’LL NOT BE FEELING GIDDY, SURR?”

R.F.C.  Officer (on leave).  “NOT TILL WE REACH TEN THOUSAND FEET.”]

* * * * *

THE CONVERT.

There were three of us—­a soldier, a flaneur and myself, who am neither but would like to be either.  We were talking about the strange appearance—­a phenomenon of the day—­of French wine in German bottles, and this led to the re-expression of my life-long surprise that bottles should exist in such numbers as they do—­bottles everywhere, all over the world, with wine and beer in them, and no one under any obligation to save and return them.

“Well,” said the soldier (who may or may not have known that I was one of those writing fellows), “that has never struck me as odd.  Of course there are lots of bottles.  Bottles are necessary.  But what beats me is the number of books.  New books and old books, books in shops and books on stalls, and books in houses; and on top of all that—­libraries.  That’s rum, if you like.  I most cordially hope,” he added, “that there are more bottles than books in the world.”

“I don’t care how many there are of either,” said the flaneur; “but I know this—­another book’s badly wanted.”

“Oh, come off it,” said the enemy of authorship.  “How can another book be needed?  Have you ever seen the British Museum Reading Room?  It’s simply awful.  It’s a kind of disease.  I was taken there once by an aunt when I was a boy, and it has haunted me ever since.  Books by the million all round the room, and the desks crowded with people writing new ones.  Men and women.  Mixed writing, you know.  Terrible!”

“All that may be true,” said the flaneur, “but the fact remains that another book is still needed.”

“Impossible,” said the soldier, “unless it’s a cheque-book.  There I’m with you.”

“No, a book—­a real book.  Small, I admit, but real.  And I believe I can make you agree with me.  I’m full of it, because I discovered the need of it only this last week-end.”

“Well, what is it to be called?” the sceptic asked.

“I think a good title would be, Have I Put Everything in?”

“Sounds like a manual of bayonet exercise,” said the soldier, and he made imaginary lunges at imaginary Huns.

“Very well then, to prevent ambiguity call it Have I Left Anything Out? The sub-title would be ‘A Guide to Packing,’ or ’The Week-Ender’s Friend.’”

“Ah!” said the other, beginning to be interested.

“With such a book,” the flaneur continued, “you could never, as I did on Saturday, arrive at a house without any pyjamas, because you would find pyjamas in the list, and directly you came to them you would shove them in.  That would be the special merit of the book—­that you would get, out of wardrobes and drawers and off the dressing-table, the things it mentioned as you read them and shove them in.”